


Call Me By His Name

by sinuous_curve



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Character with Disabilities, Community: kink_bingo, M/M, Post-Movie(s), body alteration/injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-06
Updated: 2011-06-06
Packaged: 2017-10-20 04:59:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/208993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinuous_curve/pseuds/sinuous_curve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Charles wakes from the absence of noise.</i></p><p><i>There is an empty space in his room, beside his bed. Not quiet as in an abandoned room, but utterly, featurelessly blank. Like a box made of unblemished, impenetrable metal and Charles knows before he opens his eyes. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Call Me By His Name

**Author's Note:**

> Written for kink_bingo, for the body alteration/injury square. Beta-ed by iamsupernova.

Charles wakes from the absence of noise.

For a moment, he lays very still in his bed. The drifting tendrils of his students' dreams brush lightly against his mind. In his lab, Hank dozes with visions of genetic sequences dancing tantalizingly just out of reach. Ororo dreams of catching lightning bolts in her hands and sending them cutting back across an endless night sky. Scott sees his brother pacing behind prison bars and Jean pictures a red bird with spread wings silhouetted against the bright glare of the sun. Their minds are comfortingly familiar and they aren't what woke him.

There is an empty space in his room, beside his bed. Not quiet as in an abandoned room, but utterly, featurelessly blank. Like a box made of unblemished, impenetrable metal and Charles knows before he opens his eyes.

Quietly he asks, "What are you doing here, Erik?"

Dressed in black, save for the faintly dark red sheen of his helmet, Erik nearly blends into the darkness. The pale cut of his face gleams in the very faint light of the moon coming through the windows. His features are schooled into careful blankness that Charles does not need psychic ability to read. His heart is aching as well.

"Can't one friend visit another?" Erik asks.

He's standing behind Charles' wheelchair, as though he has some plan to take an old friend on a casual stroll about the grounds of the house. It has been a year since the day on the beach when Erik last cradled Charles on his lap, and tried to blame Moira. It has been a mere six months since Charles has had a nightmare that accidentally woke the entire house screaming.

Charles pushes himself up to sitting, leaning against the headboard of his bed. He's gained a great deal of upper body strength in the last year. "I'd rather thought you considered yourself my enemy."

Erik flinches. "It isn't a zero sum game, Charles. There are-- shades of gray."

The psychic silence surrounded Erik disturbs Charles in an instinctually repulsed way. There are gradations of his ability; it isn't all plunging into the depths of mind and memory. That requires an expenditure of energy and effort. When he doesn't concentrate it's just impressions, like an emotional sensation to underscore facial expression and body language. Erik's perfect nothing is like being in a room with a dead body.

Erik wraps his hands around the handles of Charles' wheelchair. "Is this your design?" he asks lightly.

"Hank's," Charles replies, unable to muster the anger he expected. "I suppose there's no point in asking how you got in."

"I assume the security was also Hank's design?" Charles nods and Erik smiles thinly. "It's not really his fault. There's only so much he can do without metal."

The conversation is surreal, like a particularly vivid unusual dream or some fragment of memory from the few days they shared in the house and nights they shared in Charles' bed. Erik looks around the bedroom, perhaps noting the small changes. The door has been widened to accommodate Charles' wheelchair. The desk is piled untidily with students' work, the newest research in genetics, and Hank's plans to rebuild Cerebro deep in the recesses of the house. The school.

Charles swallows. "Erik."

 

Erik's eyes almost unwillingly snap to. "Charles."

"What do you want?"

It is not conscious or intentional, but they both shudder at the words that were last spoken between them a lifetime ago. Erik's lips against the back of Charles' neck and his hands splayed across Charles' chest and stomach. His hips rocking them together. _What do you want_?

Erik releases Charles' wheelchair and takes a hesitant step toward the bed without answering. Charles thinks perhaps he could be afraid, but he can't find such an emotion, nor hatred or anger. It is regret that washes through him, and the quiet, small flutter that tells him a year hasn't really changed anything. Charles saw the whole of Erik, the parts of him so broken and jagged they physically hurt to observe, the barely tamped-down well of thoughtless, chaotic rage, his core of unbending self-righteousness. But Charles can't forget the good man, though he has tried and tried again. It is that man he sees standing before him.

"I--" Erik begins, then stops. Carefully, he sits on the very edge of Charles' bed and sets his hand next to Charles' on the blanket. "Is it permanent?"

Charles blinks. "I won't be the one to assuage your guilt, Erik. You have no right to ask that of me."

"I'm not," Erik says harshly. "I don't expect anything. I want to know what I -- I just want to know."  
For the past ten years Charles has worn the same kind of pajamas to bed every night and yet he's still surprised at how steady his hands are as he begins the familiar ritual of undoing the buttons. The cool air of his room is a small shock against his chest. Perhaps as some kind of physical compensation for what he no longer feels in his legs, sensations in his torso have become amplified at the smallest stimulation.  
He slips his top off, neatly folds is, and sets it aside as Erik watches. "It's at the T11 vertebrae," Charles explains.

With one hand, he takes hold of Erik's upper arm and levels himself forward. He braces the weight of his torso with his free arm pressed against his thigh. It's still strange to feel such solid mass beneath his hands and logically it is his own flesh, unfeeling.

He closes his eyes when Erik's palm presses to the base of his skull. The weight of it is solid and quite nearly too familiar. It almost doesn't matter that they are no longer the boys they were the first time they took to the bed. The kinship between them runs as deep, even though their well of differences have proven insurmountable. Charles has learned to live with his heart broken more easily than he has learned to live without his legs. The intimacy of touch after a long, lonely year hurts like the first breath of a nearly drowned man.

With great care, Erik's fingers explore down the length of Charles' spine. He maps the topography of bone and skin. The pleasure of his touch aches, made only worse by the heat and scent that rise off familiarly from Erik's body.

Charles knows Erik has reaches his scar when he can't feel Erik's hands any longer. "That's the T11 vertebrae," Charles repeats. Second to last of the thoracic vertebrae. Caused by traumatic injury as the result of a stray bullet. It is likely permanent."

He hears Erik's sharp intake of breath and remembers suddenly that they have not seen each other since that day on the beach. With the tip of his finger, Erik traces the circumference of the scar. It's a path Charles can only feel half of. All things considered, the scar is smaller and neater than he might have expected as he laid in the sand beneath the hot sun. It looks so remarkably insignificant.

When Erik moves, Charles first thinks he's only trying to get a better look. But then Erik's body surges upward and his cheek presses to Charles' back, warm where it is his skin and edged in unyielding coolness where the helmet begins. Erik's body stretches taut to reach, but he manages and presses his mouth to Charles' scar. "I've missed you," Erik murmurs. "So very much, Charles."

Charles pushes himself up with both hands and looks at Erik, ignoring the constriction in his chest. He knows that Erik has changed from a man to a force of nature and there is nothing Charles can say that will stop him. The hurt runs too deep and too pure and the chance he had he lost. It all serves to make saying, "Kiss me, please," not just foolish but a finely honed moment of near suicidal impulse.

Erik's eyes widen in undisguised shock and, surprisingly for Charles, unexpected lust. He leans in wordlessly, but Charles stops him with a hand pressed to the center of his chest. "Take off your helmet," Charles asks.

He can't have someone in his bed he can't feel. The small logical part of his brain left standing in the nonsensical night murmurs things about location and recruited allies, but they are words without place and meaning in Charles' bed. Erik's hands lay palm up on his lap in some effigy of supplication. He bows his head and moonlight makes the awful helmet glow. Charles fully expects the demand for a promise that he will keep out of any mind that isn't his. But it doesn't come.

With shaking hands, Erik removes his helmet and sets it aside on the bed. Removed from the man it is innocuous, almost silly.

Charles nearly gasps at the sudden sense of Erik, the warm physicality of his presence made real in touching Erik's mind. The shaking coalesces into apprehension, the pulse at his neck and wrists becomes the low throb of desire.

"God, Erik," Charles whispers. "Now kiss me."

Erik kisses with determination and passion, tempered by a cautious gentleness that belied his belief that every other person on the planet is fragile. He tastes and smells the same as he did a year ago. Charles threads his fingers through the alternately spiked and flattened mess of his hair. It is very soft. With eyes closed, it is treacherously easy to forget the last twelve months and the beach and the missiles. It is like going home.

Charles feels the rhythmic motion in Erik's shoulder and hears the hushed rustle of sheets for several distractedly curious moments before he realizes what it means. He breaks their kiss with a soft sound of muted distress and frustration from Erik, and looks down to see Erik's palm pressing against his cock through the blankets.

"Erik," Charles says. Erik raises his eyes, already bled dark with want. But the last year has happened. Its reality is immutable and written in the new language Charles has learned for his body. Their old tongues no longer serve a purpose. "I can't feel that," Charles says quietly.

"But--" Erik glances to the growing evidence cupped against his palm.

Charles shakes his head. "I know. But I still can't feel it. Trust me, I've tried." He manages a thin smile and finds there is no need to give words to the implicit blame that clouds the air. He's suddenly keenly aware of too many things; his scar, his skin, his heart's rhythm picking up speed. He has no stomach or desire for the same betrayed rage and lust for vengeance that ensures he and Erik will never share more than a stolen night. Charles can't live with that and he won't.

"I'll stop," Erik says, swallowing hard.

In a year, Charles hasn't asked anyone into his bed, largely because the only people he has wanted, he cannot have. He's not a fool. He sees the pity in how people look at him and hears the regret in the way they shape his name, but his body is his. It is alive. It is very far from useless. Charles reaches out and wraps his hand around the back of Erik's neck. "I'm not asking you to stop. I am asking you to begin again."

A myriad of emotions flicker across Erik's face and for a long moment Charles is not at all sure Erik will stay. But when he does move it is with purpose, crawling fully onto the bed and settling straddled across Charles' lap. Very deliberately, he undoes the fastens of his tunic and shrugs it off. The months have brought sharper definition to his body, and a new collection of scars scattered amongst the patchwork Klaus Schmidt left in his wake. Charles splays his hands over Erik's chest. Distantly, he can feel the throbbing rhythm of Erik's heart.

Settled, Erik cups Charles' jaw in his big hands and bends to kiss the crown of Charles' head. "Can you feel that?" he asks, breath warm against Charles' scalp.

For an uncertain moment, Charles considers that Erik might be mocking him. But he rejects such a hypothesis. It doesn't feel mocking, the taut whisper of Erik's voice and the tension thrumming through his body.

"Yes," Charles says.

Erik shifts back slightly and kisses the center of Charles' brow. "Can you that?"

Charles closes his eyes. "Yes."

He feels the sandpaper rough scrape of Erik's cheek against his nose and the warm rush of air on the shell of his ear. Then Erik's teeth fasten on his earlobe and Charles nearly cries out. "Can you feel that, Charles?"  
"God, yes."

Down again, Erik's lips brush a chaste kiss on the fluttering pulse at Charles' jaw Then he seals his mouth over thin skin and sucks with enough force that Charles knows it will leave a blue bruise. He digs his nails into Erik's skin and earns a low grunt in response. "Tomorrow," Erik rasps. "Will you feel that?"

"Yes, Erik. Yes."

Charles feels the planes of Erik's face press against his shoulder, then his collarbone. Erik's hands slide around Charles' ribs and press into his back. His breath is hot and harsh, echoing faintly in the room. A quick lash of wet warmth against his nipple draws an audible gasp of pleasure from Charles and he grapples for an anchor. He finds purchase with his hands grasping Erik's broad shoulders.

"Can you feel that?" Erik growls.

"Yes, God." Charles thrusts his head back against his solid headboard. "Please, Erik, don't stop."

Erik laves the nub of flesh with the flat of his tongue. It is a universal erogenous zone, it has always been particularly responsive for Charles. But since his injury the sensitivity has increased nearly exponentially and Charles has to believe his responses teach Erik exactly that. Charles doesn't mean to make noises -- they're not alone in the house -- but Erik's insistent, wondrous mouth sucking with beautifully merciless force leaves Charles no other recourse.

He only distantly notes one of Erik's hands move down along the flesh Charles can feel to the flesh that he cannot. He hears Erik's hand push past the band of his pajama pants. "May I?" Erik asks, lips moving against Charles' skin.

Charles has long known academically that orgasm does not solely belong to his cock. But he understands it now, from his own methodical experiments in relearning his body.

"Yes," he says.

He doesn't feel Erik's hand on his cock or the old preludes to climax that he knew so well. Charles feels the excruciatingly pleasurable torment of Erik's mouth at his nipple, his teeth catching and teasing the skin with a honed ease he shouldn't have been able to learn in the few months they had. The skin of Charles' torso, arms, neck, and face prickle with sensation. His fingers involuntarily flex inward. His mouth goes dry and his eyes clench shut. It becomes sound and scent and sensation and Erik's bulk is the only thing keeping him pinned to Earth.

It takes longer than he once did and the old crescendo of orgasm changes to long, slow, pulsing waves of pleasure that radiate outward from his center. Charles' high, gasped noises change to a low groan of satisfaction. It has been so long and it is a difficult thing to be lonely.

Shaking slightly, Erik withdraws his hand and carelessly wipes it off on the sheets. Erik says nothing, but with almost clumsy hands he moves Charles' palm from his shoulder, down his chest and stomach, to the spreading damp between his own legs. "You've always underestimated what you do to me," he murmurs.

For a few precious moments they breath together in syncopation. But the time slowly begins to feel more and more stolen.

"Stay with me," Charles says, with no belief Erik will.

"Come with me," Erik says with the same expectation.

"I can't, Erik."

"Neither can I, Charles."

It hurts a little that Erik replaces his helmet before his shirt, though the stark, vast blankness that envelops his consciousness is more painful still. Charles watches Erik rise from the bed and straighten his clothing. But then again, he is no longer Erik, rather Magneto. And Charles does not know that man.

Erik walks to the doorway and pauses, looking over his shoulder. "I will always want you by my side, Charles," he says and disappears into the darkness.


End file.
